La aventura continua...

Today marks three months exactly in Mendoza. Just giving some frame of reference...

I have been keeping myself relatively busy these last few weeks, and when I say relatively busy I mean that I have an adventure of sorts every day. Yes, today my adventure was trying to explain that I wanted crushed cinnamon as opposed to cinnamon sticks, but it was still rather adventurous. It involved walking down a street I never have before in this city, as well as bumping into a new ice cream shop (which I may or may not have entered and proceeded to order a scoop of super dulce de leche and another of chocolate Rocher).

Earlier this month I went to Valparaíso, Chile with a fellow member of the Bates College Class of 2011, and consequently my roommate for the upcoming school year. Though we were only actually in Chile for a little over two days, we managed to pack in a ridiculous amount of awesome activities to fill the time. For example, we went to one of Pablo Neruda's house, La Sebastian, had a private boat tour in the bay of Valparaíso, ate fresh sea food on the water front, watched the sunset over the Pacific Ocean while on top of sand dunes, drank the best hot chocolate that my taste buds have ever had the pleasure of touching, and a silly amount of things more. And to top it all off, we took a bus ride through the Andes to cross the border of Argentina into Chile. Mendoza is a straight shot (more of less) west of Valparaíso, so to cross over, the micro takes you through a road winding up, down, sideways, longways, snosberries, through the Andes. It was at once the most beautiful, thrilling, and terrifying bus ride I may have ever experienced.

This past weekend I made my way slightly north of Mendoza with a few friends to take advantage of the time we have off thanks to the Bicentenario of Argentina, 200 years of national independence, cheap meat, great wine, and alfajores. We went to the city of San Jaun, small but very tranquil and similar in looks/design to Mendoza. After spending 4 hours in the city, during which we ate about $50 pesos worth of vegetarian food at an incredible restaurant as well as took a lame tour of a bodega in a cave, we traveled north-west to a town called San Agustín de Valle Fértil. This pueblo chiquitito of less than 3000 people is the most convenient place to stay if you are planning on visiting Parque Provincial Ichigualasto or Parque Nacional Talampaya, which we coincidentally enough happened to explore. I really can't describe either of these places with words (neither English nor Spanish), so you will just have to imagine me doing my flipping-out, making noise, body-jerk thing that I do when I'm overwhelmed and trying to explain myself. There is a place in Ichigualasto called Valle de la Luna, Valley of the Moon, that blew my mind with colors and layers of rocks that I didn't know could be in the same mountain or naturally found in nature. In Talampaya... well, I had quite a moment of emotion that I will surely remember forever.

Tomorrow promises greatness, as we are having a party in my wood carving class to celebrate the Bicentenario. For those of you who don't know, I am learning how to carve really awesome things into wood at the Cultural Center in Mendoza with a group of about five women over 60, one old man who pretends to be disgruntled but is really just bashful and has the most beautiful smile, and one artsy woman in her mid-30s who dyes her hair pink. It's my favorite three hours of my week. We drink tea and eat alfajores and tortitas while the old ladies make fun of me for not smoking cigarettes and then proceed to teach me dirty words/phrases. And I absolutely LOVE working with my hands and creating these somewhat useless wooden objects. It's really really difficult to find raw, unfinished wood here, but I managed to finagle a 60 cm piece of ceder that is INCREDIBLE. Anyway, so we're going to eat tons of great Argentine food tomorrow, and immediately afterward I am hopping on a bus to go south to a little town called Tunuyan. There is an organic farm called Madre Tierra and I'm going to be volunteering for a few days to get out of the city and learn some.

Time to eat the peanut butter I made earlier today with some dulce de leche and my family! Oh, my family is AMAZING.


Lunch anyone?



Me with some really great rocks in Talampaya.


Hermanos and I celebrating the Bicentenario.

La vida buena

Wow. I've been pretty bad at updating this unless I have insomnia and it's 5 in the morning and I've got nothing better to do than kill mosquitos and twiddle my dedos. But! Here we are again with another insightful and seat-gripping post that will make you cry/sweat/bleed/fill that insatiable whole in the pit of your stomach that only a Limor can fill.

As of yesterday I moved out of my first house here in Mendoza and into house 2.0. I never considered how hard it might be living with a completely new family, trying to integrate myself into the family rhythm, adjust to the family rules... especially when they are absolutely insane and asinine. But I've left the negative energy behind and am now in a completely different section of the city with a completely different family. A little insight: the walls in the kitchen are painted lime green, accented with hand-crafted and painted ceramics, old photographs, and kitchy-whatnots. Most of the furniture has been painted by my sister Jeannete (24, tranquiiiila, studying to be an artist/musician/actriz/whatever outlet presents itself for creating things), and the walls are covered with art. Enter my bedroom: a little nook equipped with drawers, a dresser, a funky little lamp that makes the room purple if I want to, and two doors that lead outside to a roof/terrace that I can go out on ANYTIME I want without fear of an alarm going off and having to answer a secret code to the disgruntled man on the phone. When I came home from school/volunteering today, I could hear my mom, sister, and brother running to the door and my siblings both saying "no, I'm going to open it!"

A very important concept down here is that of 'onda'. In effect, onda is similar to the word vibe, only it is used with more frequency. Example, that hippy from South Dakota that is traveling through Mendoza and gave me a hand-painted rose has a buena onda (buena means good). It's really common to refer to a person who has either buena onda or mala onda... a house that has buena onda... a social interaction/situation with buena onda. So let me say that my family, house, and everything in between has a BUENISIMA onda. I feel like I am wanted, welcome, and respected. I also live a block and a half away from General Parque San Martin, an enormous park that is on the foothills of the Andes and is equipped with ample green spaces, a depressing zoo (which I mistakenly visited last weekend), a lake with an island in the center you can visit and tons of crazy trees, a small mountain to climb, an infinite amount of secret places inhabited by bums, Argentines making out, and nature-nature-nature. Especially now, with all the leaves changing and sprinkling the world with orange, yellow, and brown, I know this is the place for me (it's currently autumn in Mendoza... wicked pretty, but not New England pretty).

During the last few weeks I have been significantly improving my command of the Spanish language. Sometimes I really feel like I'm getting the hang of it, but yet I always have moments of extreme frustrating when I can't conjugate a verb, lack the vocabulary to say something, or just can't seem to move my mouth/tongue in the way I need to to form words and sentences. Overall though, I find myself less and less in situations where I can't express my thoughts, and I even found myself debating the subject of climate change with a friend here. That's right. A friend. I've somehow managed to meet a group of really really fun people here that I feel comfortable and happy around. Last weekend we went to a pajama party together (a great story, if anyone wants to hear the details another time), and sometime in the recent past gathered at a friend's house, bought all the fixings for smores, and taught the Mendocinos how to make the most delicious fire-themed snack there is. One of them even bought a kilo of marshmallows the day after because he liked them so much. Overall, I am so, so content and happy.

What else to say? I am REALLY good at making peanut butter, learned how to cook some classic Argentine food last weekend (flan, pan casero, Humita, empanadas) in the countryside, can dance folklore, am learning how to carve wood, and can say lots of dirty words in Spanish. I leave you with some photos of what I've been up to:


Me in Portrerillos--beautiful town west of Mendoza.


Tiger looking at me at the zoo.